Through Fragility

As I write this in October 2024, a remarkable event has taken place: for the first time in history, researchers specializing in artificial intelligence have been awarded the Nobel Prize in both Physics and Chemistry. This recognition by the Nobel Committee, often regarded as conservative, is widely seen as an acknowledgment of AI as an extension of human intelligence and as marking the dawn of its definitive arrival. While we live in an era where human intelligence is believed to have reached unprecedented heights, this advancement is accompanied by a strangely opaque sense of uncertainty. Alongside optimistic visions of advanced technology solving humanity’s greatest challenges, there exists a deep-seated fear that it may one day overwhelm us. It is in this intersection of hope and anxiety that When Spiders Spin Dusk poses critical questions about the technologies we use today and the cultures they have affected.

The term “Ddang-geomi(땅거미)” in the exhibition title carries dual meanings in Korean. Firstly, it refers to the dim light of “dusk”, an ambiguous moment between day and night when it is difficult to distinguish whether the silhouette over the hill is that of a dog or a wolf—a metaphor for our current uncertainty about whether today’s technologies are a blessing or a curse. Secondly, “Ddang-geomi” also refers to a spider living on the ground. In Greek mythology, the genius artist Arachne dared to challenge the goddess Athena in a weaving contest and won, only to be cursed by Athena to become a spider. The spider, symbolizing talent, has since appeared in countless fables and myths. Even without knowledge of these stories, the spider’s ability to read its environment, connect edges, and weave webs mirrors the role of the artist who observes societal phenomena, connects disparate elements, and creates something new. In this way, sunset hour becomes a project reflecting on our current circumstances, the era we inhabit, and the questions art can pose in response.

To explore these questions, we invited UKAI Projects, a nonprofit organization based in Toronto focused on AI research and education, to join the project in November 2023. One of the core considerations in this collaboration was the belief that examining how historical storytelling and cultural ideologies shape or obscure technological systems could serve as a vital starting point for fostering better narratives about AI, the climate crisis, and ecosystems. The ongoing dialogue among participants with diverse cultural backgrounds resembled the process of weaving willow branches from different soils into a basket. Just as crafting a beautiful basket requires selecting branches of the right thickness, length, and color, the six participating artists aligned their languages and perspectives to organize their individual experiences into a collective framework. This relational process, central to the project, extended beyond human interactions to include technology, ecology, and landscapes. It became an inquiry into how diverse experiences could coexist without being devalued or subsumed and how they could be integrated into a larger whole. Through this sustained dialogue, the project consistently asked how we might view technology, nature, and humanity through a relational lens.

In today’s rapid advancements in media and technology, the minerals and natural resources required to operate modern technologies are being depleted at an alarming rate. Every component of the expanded network of AI systems—from network routers to batteries and data centers—relies on raw materials that took billions of years to form within the Earth, yet these resources are being exploited and consumed in a matter of decades. Nature, long treated as a resource for human convenience and prosperity, is similarly entangled in an exploitative relationship or, at best, a commensal relationship with technology. This anthropocentric domination extends beyond nature and technology and ultimately affects people as well.

As is widely acknowledged, the production and processing of data for AI often depend on the low-wage labor of workers in the Global South. Additionally, numerous incidents of conversational AI systems generating sexist and racist remarks underscore the persistent patterns of subjugation embedded in human systems. As the development and use of AI accelerate, hierarchical structures and biases perpetuated by a small elite are likely to grow even more pronounced.

Before we reach a point where we consume one another in this cycle of exploitation, can we find a way to break the structural chains of domination—where one side controls and profits at the expense of the other—and instead establish more equitable relationships within today’s technological environment?

Borrowing the words of novelist Han Kang, the project sought to explore a “language of imagination from the first-person perspective of all beings on Earth,” a language that connects us to one another. Last September, curators, researchers, and artists from Korea and Canada gathered at a farm in Wakefield, Quebec, to embark on this exploration. They began by cooking and sharing meals, walking together in the forest, collecting sounds of mushrooms and insects, and learning how to breathe alongside the living beings inhabiting that space.

The conversations and interests we shared during this process intersected, diverged, and wove through one another, branching out in multiple directions. (These interconnected interests like a networked system, making them difficult to summarize in just a few keywords. However, to aid in understanding this project, they have been organized into three main thematic explorations.)

Firstly, the works of Sunjeong Hwang and Erica Jean Lincoln, both of whom explore the interconnectedness of ecological, cultural, and technological systems, can be tied together under the concept of “planetary weaving.” Hwang interprets weaving not merely as the physical act of interlacing fibers but as a multilayered practice that forms profound connections among nature, humans, and technology. She further sees weaving as a process that integrates data, material, and temporal layers to create perceptual experiences.

In her work Warp×Warp(West)(2024), Hwang reimagines traditional weaving by removing the weft and devising a porous tree structure made entirely of warp threads. This porous system, formed using imagery and data of microorganisms, fungal spores, and algae collected during her research, metaphorically represents the tangled temporalities, events, and existences of the world we inhabit. While Hwang dedicates herself to weaving together Earth's entities, Lincoln seeks to discover connections between the flow of water in her body and that of the planet. She goes further by personifying technologies like GPS, using their glitches to construct new narratives.

Her piece GPS Dreams: La Pêche(2024) originates from physical and psychological challenges she encountered during a residency. Unable to explore the forest due to abnormal weather conditions and physical limitations, Lincoln relied on GPS and 3D scanners to navigate the terrain. While sleeping in her tent, she discovered distorted mountain data caused by GPS errors. Imagining the GPS as though it had sleepwalked across the mountains, she merged this data with the contours of her own body to create a fictional landscape. Her whimsical approach is rooted in recognizing technology as an equal entity, transforming technological errors into playful and creative events rather than failures.

Next, Maurice Jones and Unmake Lab interpret technology within the social and cultural contexts and view it in connection with historical narratives. Drawing from the concept of Black techné, which seeks to realize new possibilities created by artificial intelligence and the radical survival strategies of Black communities, Maurice explores how the history of Black societies formed through marronage—autonomous communities established by escaped slaves—can be applied to contemporary machine learning technologies. Through this lens, he investigates how technology can break free from existing systems and serve as a tool for liberation.

Unmake Lab, on the other hand, examines the latent spaces inherent in artificial intelligence within the framework of synthetic ethnography, focusing on the colonial practices historically embedded in “taxidermy” and “trophy hunting” imagery. During their research, they visited various museums and archives, observing scenes where animal remains were artificially preserved through taxidermy, symbolizing and materializing animals in specific ways. Furthermore, they identified how longstanding cultural habits and practices are reflected in the objects generated by AI—for instance, in trophy hunting imagery, where recurring elements such as white men, rifles, and sunset-lit savannas appear. They liken this phenomenon to “muscle memory,” shaped by practices cultivated over time, and have coined the term “muscle data” to describe it.

Lastly, Sunjoo Lee and François Quévillon present works rooted in ecological and geological research, exploring the role of art in addressing today’s ecological crises. Sunjoo Lee’s Counting Attunment(2024) investigates the potential of electrochemical processes in wetland bacteria as a means to replace conventional power systems. Her work questions systems created and judged by human standards, such as time and utility, by reinterpreting electricity, generated through interactions among diverse microorganisms, as something to be cared for rather than merely consumed.

François Quévillon, who has extensively documented the diverse terrains and ecosystems of Canadian gorges, cliffs, and coastlines, presents Growth and Decay (2024) in this exhibition. This work was developed during the residency at the Ferme Lanthorn and involved observing the vegetation along streams and using computational photography to examine the process of growth and decay inherent in plants. By combining multidimensional photography with AI-generated 3D imagery, Quévillon meticulously records ecosystems affected by climate change and human activity. He then reconstructs these environments on a natural scale within the exhibition space to draw attention to the vitality and phenomena of nature.

Through such acts of interaction with others, reflections on the past to understand the present, and actionable practices, When Spiders Spin Dusk explores ways to restore equitable exchanges with non-human life forms and to share breath together. In a world suffocated by the arrogance of humanity believing itself at the apex of the ecosystem and by the pollution emitted by its technological achievements, we can once again learn the universal act of breathing from the earth. The breath of plants sustains the existence of animals and humans, and we endlessly share this act of breathing as we coexist. Ultimately, rediscovering how to breathe alongside the beings within and around us becomes a journey toward an alternative cultural origin—one that does not seek to dominate but instead nurtures the bonds we share with our environment.

*The concept and expression of "universal breath" in the title and body of this text are borrowed from feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray's work Through Vegetal Being.

Participating Artists: Erika Jean Lincoln, Francois Quevillon, Maurice Jones, Sunjoo Lee, Sunjeong Hwang, Unmake Lab

Exhibition Curator: Junghyun Kim 

Exhibition Collaborator: UKAI Projects

Curatoial Assistant: Yeji Kim

Graphic Design: Formless Twins

Web Development: Yirang Ok

Supported by Arts Council Korea International Collaboration Fund and International Arts Network Support